Database systems are quite prevalent in today's world. Databases store large quantities of information in such a manner to facilitate expeditious querying and ease of use. Databases are organized collections of related information or data. Most databases store data in a plurality of multidimensional tables. Tables contain a series of rows also referred to as records. Each row provides particular information about a particular thing such as a customer. Rows are divided into sections called columns. The intersection between a row and column is referred to as a field. Each field provides data or information related to a particular thing. The columns specify the particular type of data provided in each field. For example, a table can be established for purchases of a particular product. The table can include a plurality of rows corresponding to individual customers, and several columns for first name, last name, address, state, zip code, number of products purchased, price, date, etc.
Database engines or management systems provide a means and mechanism to retrieve and manipulate data from database tables upon specification of a query by a user. A query is typically expressed in some query language such as Structured Query Language (SQL). Queries specify the data to be retrieved from a database. Therefore, a query can specify one or more tables as well as the rows to be retrieved and any data operations or manipulations to be performed. Upon proper specification of a query, the database engine retrieves data, performs any specified operations and produces a results table.
Additionally, some database systems support full-text queries to facilitate location of items in a table, which satisfy a full text query. An example of such a query in SQL is SELECT * from ResumeTable where contains (ResumeText, ‘“SQL Server” AND DBA’, which finds all resumes from a table of resumes where ResumeText contains the phrase “SQL Server” and the term “DBA.” In a news application, a query could be SELECT * from CurrentNews where contains(NewsText, ‘Election AND “Defense Spending”’), which retrieves the news items including the term “Election” and the phrase “Defense spending” from the CurrentNews table. In any event, queries are conventionally specified and then executed on database data to retrieve a result set.